What sexual predator would Jesus support to hold the keys of public trust? It’s time to say “NO more!” In the current case of Senate candidate Roy Moore, it’s time to say “NO Moore!”

American so-called Christians have been practicing an Olympian level of moral gymnastics to justify sexual predators holding positions of great public power and high public trust, when sexual abuse is perhaps the epitome of an abuse of power and trust. How can character matter in the face of our apparent national addiction to aberrant characters and simple lust for power? Donald Trump, Sexual Predator-in-Chief, has lowered the bar so low that limbo seems impossible wile hell seems assure abet. Going long with Roy Moore, a serial sexual predator of teenagers, promises to come with a free handbasket on that road paved with good inattentions.

In honor of that just saying, NO Moore, I have created a free poster: Jesus breaks silence on Senate candidate Roy Moore Just Saying NO Moore. Pleas feel free to share widely with friends and enemies.

Roy Moore now has President Trump’s endorsement, support from the Republican National Committee and a reasonably strong chance of winning — all proving that the many GOP leaders who tried to stop him have little control over their party. Whatever control GOP leaders retained after the tea party movement, in fact, has been severely undermined by Trump. And Moore, who stands accused of sexual misconduct with multiple minors, is easily the best indicator of that to date.

But the reason something like Moore could happen is more complicated than just Trump. And Republicans can blame one thing that Trump stoked, with plenty of help: The party’s increasing persecution complex.

After decades of being told that the media is out to get them, the tea party took that a step further and told Republicans that the GOP establishment was also out to get them. Now Trump, with some prodding from Stephen K. Bannon, has told GOP voters that the entire political establishment and even many American institutions (law enforcement, the judiciary, the intelligence community, etc.) are out to get them. The combined effect of all of this is that Republican voters almost reflexively recoil at the perception of being told what to do, whether by The Washington Post and the New York Times, by Mitch McConnell and Paul D. Ryan, or by anyone else not named Trump. Trump’s brand of populism has turned the enemy of their enemies into the friends of all Republicans.

And nobody was primed to exploit that sense of persecution like Moore.

Much like Trump, Moore isn’t someone who Republican voters necessarily love, so much as someone that supposedly evil political forces have tried to undermine. Moore finished fourth in the 2010 Alabama governor’s race and barely won his state Supreme Court seat back in 2012. Yet just as with Trump, who started the 2016 GOP primary deeply unpopular with Republicans, here we are.

And this actually began long before the current allegations. During this year’s Senate primary, Moore seized upon his alleged persecution, arguing relentlessly and in hyperbolic terms about how Senate Majority Leader McConnell (R-Ky.) was out to get him. McConnell, of course, had become toxic in Republican primaries thanks in large part to Trump. So even as Trump nominally backed Moore’s primary runoff opponent, appointed Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.), voters picked Moore in the primary and then in the two-man primary runoff.

That sense of persecution only increased, of course, once a number of women came forward in The Post to say Moore had pursued them when they were teenagers — including one who accused him of unwanted sexual touching when she was 14. Since then, other accusers have come forward, most notably a woman who accused him of sexual assault when she was 16.

The more than three-decade-old allegations lend themselves to Moore’s assertions of persecution. That’s in large part because, like many accusations of years-old sexual misconduct, there is unlikely to ever be bona fide proof of them. Even as The Post and others have substantiated the women’s claims to the extent that’s possible, there is still faith and trust involved. Republicans in Alabama, it turns out, have faith in Moore and little trust in the national media — despite the severity of the accusations.

Another reason Moore has been uniquely able to hold the GOP base is his political career, which has been built upon fashioning himself as a martyr. He has effectively been kicked off the state Supreme Court twice for choosing his religious convictions over the law. Moore was almost perfectly positioned to claim persecution in this case, because he’s been claiming it for the better part of 20 years.

None of this is to suggest the GOP has a monopoly on claiming political persecution. Politics is a game that rewards finding a convincing boogeyman, and populist candidates like Trump tend to find a large supply of boogeymen and rigged systems on the path to political office. But today’s Republicans are uniquely skeptical of the things they hear from the national media, the intelligence community and even their party leaders — all of which Trump has argued don’t have their interests at heart.

It’s almost a perfect storm, and combined with the uniqueness we find in Alabama, it might soon give us Sen. Roy Moore (R-Ala.), despite GOP leaders’ best efforts.

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Dirty old men, predominantly dirty old white men, are running rampant throughout our culture and politics. A long overdue push back is underway as many powerful sexual predators are finally being held to some account. The cutting edge of this push back against patriarchy and hypermasculinity will likely be best measured by whether Prez Donald Trump, Sexual Predator-in-Chief, and Roy Moore, Senate candidate and former Alabama state supreme court justice, will continue with impunity. While sexual assault and sexual predation are not limited to any political party, Republicans manage to ascend to new heights of hypocrisy in the quests to maintain and grow their political power. In their honor, I unveil my latest free poster: GOP Greedy Old Perverts Sexual Predator-in-Chief Donald Trump and Roy Moore. Please feel free to share with friends and enemies.

Sexual harassment and assault is only one form of abuse of power. This op-ed, How Donald Trump Opened the Door to Roy Moore, connects the underlying political dynamics that Donald Trump and Roy Moore serve in prefiguring authoritarian or fascist politics:

In 2002, the Alabama Supreme Court issued a ruling in a child custody battle between a lesbian mother and an allegedly abusive father. The parents had originally lived in Los Angeles, and when they divorced in 1992, the mother received primary physical custody. But she was an alcoholic, and in 1996, she sent her three children to live with her ex-husband, who’d since moved to Alabama, while she went to rehab. Her lawyer, Wendy Brooks Crew, told me they had an understanding that the kids would stay with their dad for a year, but he refused to return them to their mother because she was living with a woman.

There was evidence that the father was abusing the kids, who by 2002 were teenagers. He acknowledged whipping them with a belt and forcing them to sit with paper bags over their heads. He refused to send the younger children to summer school, even though their grades were bad. When the kids called their mother, their father taped the conversations. By the time the case got to the Alabama Supreme Court, a lower court had ruled in the mother’s favor. The Alabama Supreme Court reversed the ruling, with then Chief Justice Roy Moore writing in a concurring opinion that a gay person couldn’t be a fit parent.

“Homosexual conduct is, and has been, considered abhorrent, immoral, detestable, a crime against nature, and a violation of the laws of nature and of nature’s God upon which this nation and our laws are predicated,” wrote Moore. He added, “The state carries the power of the sword, that is, the power to prohibit conduct with physical penalties, such as confinement and even execution. It must use that power to prevent the subversion of children toward this lifestyle, to not encourage a criminal lifestyle.”

The man who wrote those words is now the Republican candidate for the United States Senate from Alabama. In some ways, this is an embarrassment for Donald Trump, who heeded establishment advice to support Moore’s opponent, sitting Senator Luther Strange, in the primary. But Moore’s victory is also a victory for Trumpism, a populist movement that has eroded normal limits on political behavior.

On the surface, Trump and Moore couldn’t be more different. The president is a thrice-married former casino owner who let Howard Stern call his own daughter a “piece of ass.” Moore is a fundamentalist Southern Baptist who writes rhyming verse denouncing wanton sex. “Your children wander aimlessly poisoned by cocaine/Choosing to indulge their lusts, when God has said abstain,” he wrote in his sarcastically titled poem “America the Beautiful.” Trump described himself, during his campaign, as a “real friend” of the L.G.B.T. community, even if he hasn’t behaved like one in office. Moore has said that gay sex should be illegal.

But read the rest of “America the Beautiful,” and you start to see where Trump and Moore’s worldviews overlap. Both see a nation in apocalyptic decline, desperate for redemption. Whereas Trump spoke of “American carnage” in his dystopian inauguration speech, Moore calls the country a “moral slum” awaiting God’s judgment. Like the president, Moore is a conspiracy theorist who demonizes religious minorities; he once wrote that Keith Ellison, a Democrat from Minnesota, should not be allowed to serve in the House of Representatives because he is Muslim.

I met Moore over a decade ago, when I was researching my first book, “Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism.” By then, Moore had been forced off the bench for refusing a federal judge’s order to remove a 2.6-ton Ten Commandments monument he’d installed in the state judicial building. This martyrdom made him a cult figure on the religious right. A group of retired military men had taken the monument on tour, holding over 150 viewings and rallies; at an event in Austin, Tex., one of them spoke bitterly to me about the outsized power of American Jews. (Moore would later be re-elected to his seat, only to be suspended for the rest of his term in 2016 for ordering judges not to comply with the Supreme Court decision overturning bans on gay marriage.)

In trying to understand the movement I was reporting on, I turned to scholars of authoritarianism and fascism. If their words seemed relevant then, they’re even more so now. Fritz Stern, a historian who fled Nazi Germany, described the “conservative revolution” that prefigured National Socialism: “The movement did embody a paradox: its followers sought to destroy the despised present in order to recapture an idealized past in an imaginary future.”

His formulation helps explain the overlapping appeal of Trump and Moore, who thrill their supporters with their distinctly un-conservative eagerness to destroy legal and political norms. What Moore’s critics see as lawlessness, his fans see as insurgent valor. Trump’s most prominent nationalist supporters, including Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka, lined up behind Moore, describing him as part of the Trumpian revolution. Nigel Farage, a right-wing British politician and Trump ally, flew to Fairhope, Ala., to speak at a rally for Moore, saying on stage, “It is getting someone like him elected that will rejuvenate the movement that led to Trump and Brexit.”

Whether or not that’s true, the movement that led to Trump has brought us to a place where Moore will probably soon sit in the United States Senate, something I could hardly have imagined when I first encountered him. Back then, anti-gay prejudice was far more acceptable than it is today, but Moore’s messianic denunciation of a lesbian mother was still shocking. Trump is not a pious man, but by destroying informal restraints on reactionary rhetoric, he’s made his party hospitable to the cruelest of theocrats. Moore’s success is bound to encourage more candidates like him. The Republican establishment’s borders have been breached. Its leaders should have built a wall.

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Logos usedToo meanKnow ledgeLike that age owed ad viceWould you jump off a bridgeIf every won ails didAs in sayin’Bye your good willAs money oozes from the non-prophet, health care (sic) systemThe sores of philandering philanthropyWell, come to PR medicaAn unholy owned subsidiaryOf Tourette’s IndustriesYou will swearBuy themWeather you want to or notTheir marketing deportment isAs good as goaledAs black as poets incGreasing their willsStuck with irresistible pitchAs verbally contractedNot worth the pay perPrinted uponYet this aweWill in deedMake it passable to liveAs resistance is feudalAnd beingPennedIs what poets dueIndubitablySow brandedAs live stockFor tolledToo get a riseThe Tao jonesWorking in our flavorOver and over and overUn-till bank rolledIn a dark allyBuy and buyHour justifiable salivationAttending too in trap meant anonAgin and agin and aginFore the yoke is on-usAwe the moreFore the fire brandNot with standingIn a flesh of geniusIs incensedAs won red scentBecomes tooUntil udderly crying outIn an unherd-of steerI love the smellOf nay palmIn the mourningHigh noonAnd too fly by nightSullen this, sullen thatSoully worriedHow irateIn some won ails sizeButt, its my skin in the gameLonely hopingKnot to be foundWithin and withoutMy pants around my kneesAs its onlyMy panties in a bunchOverAwe that maddersPoetic licenseAnd corporate patronageSome bodyHas toPay the piperTo keep your roost ere plumbedAs upright as it comesWhy cant youSay “uncle”You knowLike that rich uncleWho wants youTo sit on his lapAnd tell youBed timeStoriesThat will mark you for lifeButt kept mysteriously in a family weighAs longAs in your genesAs in c’est la vieOr sow, I’ve herdAs ifWe are posed to be prodOf being cattleScarred I’ll goAll Gandhi on you asBE the beefAwe the wile beating a different conundrumRefraining that whole eat me thingThe mark of the best (sic)Or rather sic sic sic’sSow fresh and hoary unholy revelationsIndulging vain wishes for dead presidentsAnd CEOsMen of letters posterior to autograftAss-ever-rateIn playing defenseAt my offenseWith such propriety, proprietary and propertyFor my own good, posedlyTheir mirror deflectionBut, but, but, but, butExcept two a tAnd soI’m bare assedAnd withoutThey’re moneyYou’re nothing buttA bumAnd the rushToo be justTHAT

I am not a big fan of branding, whether it is of livestock or in corporate public relations. I was inspired to write this poem because at a regular monthly poetry reading they secured a small amount of funding to pay invited featured poets. The source of funding included local community foundations plus the nearly ubiquitous ProMedica, the largest health system within the Toledo region. I have come to call Promedica, “PR Medica,” because of its often over-sized logo and branding in Toledo, aka ProMedica-ville, is nearly omnipresent in venues big and small. I found its intrusion into the local poetry scene offensive, particularly because I am an iconoclastic, anti-commercial poet who specializes in addressing social justice issues. This was a little too close to home for me. I announced before my open mic reading that I did not want to be considered as an invited poet. I suggested that to de-commercialize this reading, sending back the portion payed for by ProMedica, along with a strongly worded letter (might I suggest F and U), would be in order.

This is not the first time that I have unleashed my poetic visions against ProMedica. The first time I devoted a poem to ProMedica was when they sponsored a state-wide poetry contest on the topic of anti-hunger with an honorarium to the winning poet that would befit and maintain the status of starving artist. My unsubmitting, unremitting poem: Speaking With Spoken Sword: Owed To Hungering Fore Anew ProMedica.

ProMedica, if you want to combat hunger, pay all of your employees a living wage. ProMedica, if you want to fulfill your mission and redeem your non-prophet status, devote 0.01% of your revenue toward advocating for universal health care, everybody in, nobody out. Until then, you can bye this poet all you want.

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This poem is in response to President (sic) Donald Trump’s pulling out of the Paris climate change accord. For badder or worse, this clear signal of climate insanity may provide the best united front yet for international resistance to American hegemony; plus, American abdication of global leadership offers opportunities to forge more sane efforts at worldwide solidarity.

“To the dismay of our allies, the White House could any day announce the U.S. will withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. But as a patriot and climate activist, I’m not dismayed. I actually want to pull out.

The value of the Paris Agreement is in its aspirational goal of limiting temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius, not in its implementation mechanisms, which are voluntary, insufficient, and impossible to monitor. But that modest goal will be breached shortly, which makes the agreement a kind of fig leaf, offering political cover to those who would soft-pedal the runaway climate crisis a while longer.

The U.N. Conference of the Parties is certainly not the organization to constrain powerful, retrenched fossil fuel interests and other bad climate actors and rogue climate states. The Paris agreement affords oil, gas and coal companies a globally visible platform through which to peddle influence and appear engaged on climate change while lobbying for business as usual. That won’t save the climate.At what point do we give up wishful, incremental thinking — that reason will prevail, the free market will adjust, the president’s daughter and son-in-law will dissuade him from the worst climaticide, the Democratic Party will do something, or prior policies which tinker on the margins like the Clean Power Plan won’t be totally obliterated?

I’d argue we’ve reached that point. If Trump withdraws from the Paris Agreement, at least we will have clarity instead of false hope.

Who wanted to keep the U.S. in the Paris agreement anyway? People around the world, a majority of Americans, environmentalists and other coastal elites — constituencies for which Trump has shown indifference and/or contempt. Staying in was also favored by Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP, Peabody coal, eBay, HP, General Mills, Kellogg, Tesla and other multinationals the Trump administration would have preferred to keep happy. But let’s face it, they won’t be all that mad the U.S. is pulling out, and the political impact won’t be all that great.

Neither will the environmental impact. In fact, since the agreement lacks teeth, breaking it won’t have any effect on the climate in the short term. But in the longer term, the shock and rethinking it will cause in some circles just might precipitate political and cultural changes we need to stave off climate cataclysm.

Pulling out of Paris will also give the president a political boost. It gives Breitbart and Fox something to crow about and The New York Times, Washington Post and CNN something that’s not Russia-gate to fret over.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to justify or abet Trump and his supporters in climate denial, and I’m not thinking climate activists and the Trump administration will end up in some the kind of strange-bedfellows embrace. Personally, I loathe this administration and find the president’s actions mean, maleficent, and mendacious, though it’s nothing personal. On my very best days I can eke out a couple minutes of meta loving-kindness meditation for the president as a person, but it’s a struggle.

I welcome pulling out of the Paris agreement because it will disrupt our complacency and strengthen the most vigorous avenues of climate action left to us, which are through the courts and direct citizen action. It lends much more credence to the Our Children’s Trust legal argument that the federal government has utterly failed in its responsibility to consider the long-term impact of carbon emissions. It advances the arguments of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund in their federal lawsuit for the right to a livable climate. And it strengthens the case for climate activists attempting to raise the “necessity defense” as a justification for citizen climate action, as I and my fellow “valve turners” are doing as we face criminal charges for shutting off emergency valves on oil sands pipelines.

It’s also true that withdrawal from Paris deprives mainstream environmental organizations and the foundations and funders that guide them of a key deliverable, and that could risk eroding support for them. Perhaps that’s not such a bad thing. Many of them have pursued an utterly bankrupt strategy of understating the climate problem, negotiating with the fossil fuel industry, and cherry-picking small victories to showcase organizational accomplishments at the expense of a functional movement strategy.

Pulling out of Paris takes false hopes off the table, and opens the way for building an effective climate movement. So as committed climate activist who knows we’re running out of time, I say, let’s get on with it.”

The false propriety of incremental change is being smashed. Let’s join together as one planet, one humanity, to build a lasting consensus that Mother Earth deserves our love and undying respect.

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Once again, Chris Hedges nails it in his article, Noam Chomsky Has ‘Never Seen Anything Like This,’ discussing the precarious state of the current American political landscape and bringing to bear Chomsky’s rigorous and insightful analysis over the last several generations:

Noam Chomsky is America’s greatest intellectual. His massive body of work, which includes nearly 100 books, has for decades deflated and exposed the lies of the power elite and the myths they perpetrate. Chomsky has done this despite being blacklisted by the commercial media, turned into a pariah by the academy and, by his own admission, being a pedantic and at times slightly boring speaker. He combines moral autonomy with rigorous scholarship, a remarkable grasp of detail and a searing intellect. He curtly dismisses our two-party system as a mirage orchestrated by the corporate state, excoriates the liberal intelligentsia for being fops and courtiers and describes the drivel of the commercial media as a form of “brainwashing.” And as our nation’s most prescient critic of unregulated capitalism, globalization and the poison of empire, he enters his 81st year warning us that we have little time left to save our anemic democracy.

“It is very similar to late Weimar Germany,” Chomsky told me when I called him at his office in Cambridge, Mass. “The parallels are striking. There was also tremendous disillusionment with the parliamentary system. The most striking fact about Weimar was not that the Nazis managed to destroy the Social Democrats and the Communists but that the traditional parties, the Conservative and Liberal parties, were hated and disappeared. It left a vacuum which the Nazis very cleverly and intelligently managed to take over.”

“The United States is extremely lucky that no honest, charismatic figure has arisen,” Chomsky went on. “Every charismatic figure is such an obvious crook that he destroys himself, like McCarthy or Nixon or the evangelist preachers. If somebody comes along who is charismatic and honest this country is in real trouble because of the frustration, disillusionment, the justified anger and the absence of any coherent response. What are people supposed to think if someone says ‘I have got an answer, we have an enemy’? There it was the Jews. Here it will be the illegal immigrants and the blacks. We will be told that white males are a persecuted minority. We will be told we have to defend ourselves and the honor of the nation. Military force will be exalted. People will be beaten up. This could become an overwhelming force. And if it happens it will be more dangerous than Germany. The United States is the world power. Germany was powerful but had more powerful antagonists. I don’t think all this is very far away. If the polls are accurate it is not the Republicans but the right-wing Republicans, the crazed Republicans, who will sweep the next election.”

“I have never seen anything like this in my lifetime,” Chomsky added. “I am old enough to remember the 1930s. My whole family was unemployed. There were far more desperate conditions than today. But it was hopeful. People had hope. The CIO was organizing. No one wants to say it anymore but the Communist Party was the spearhead for labor and civil rights organizing. Even things like giving my unemployed seamstress aunt a week in the country. It was a life. There is nothing like that now. The mood of the country is frightening. The level of anger, frustration and hatred of institutions is not organized in a constructive way. It is going off into self-destructive fantasies.”

“I listen to talk radio,” Chomsky said. “I don’t want to hear Rush Limbaugh. I want to hear the people calling in. They are like [suicide pilot] Joe Stack. What is happening to me? I have done all the right things. I am a God-fearing Christian. I work hard for my family. I have a gun. I believe in the values of the country and my life is collapsing.”

Chomsky has, more than any other American intellectual, charted the downward spiral of the American political and economic system, in works such as “On Power and Ideology: The Managua Lectures,” “Rethinking Camelot: JFK, the Vietnam War, and US Political Culture,” “A New Generation Draws the Line: Kosovo, East Timor and the Standards of the West,” “Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky,” “Manufacturing Consent” and “Letters From Lexington: Reflections on Propaganda.” He reminds us that genuine intellectual inquiry is always subversive. It challenges cultural and political assumptions. It critiques structures. It is relentlessly self-critical. It implodes the self-indulgent myths and stereotypes we use to elevate ourselves and ignore our complicity in acts of violence and oppression. And it makes the powerful, as well as their liberal apologists, deeply uncomfortable.

Chomsky reserves his fiercest venom for the liberal elite in the press, the universities and the political system who serve as a smoke screen for the cruelty of unchecked capitalism and imperial war. He exposes their moral and intellectual posturing as a fraud. And this is why Chomsky is hated, and perhaps feared, more among liberal elites than among the right wing he also excoriates. When Christopher Hitchens decided to become a windup doll for the Bush administration after the attacks of 9/11, one of the first things he did was write a vicious article attacking Chomsky. Hitchens, unlike most of those he served, knew which intellectual in America mattered.

“I don’t bother writing about Fox News,” Chomsky said. “It is too easy. What I talk about are the liberal intellectuals, the ones who portray themselves and perceive themselves as challenging power, as courageous, as standing up for truth and justice. They are basically the guardians of the faith. They set the limits. They tell us how far we can go. They say, ‘Look how courageous I am.’ But do not go one millimeter beyond that. At least for the educated sectors, they are the most dangerous in supporting power.”

Chomsky, because he steps outside of every group and eschews all ideologies, has been crucial to American discourse for decades, from his work on the Vietnam War to his criticisms of the Obama administration. He stubbornly maintains his position as an iconoclast, one who distrusts power in any form.

“Most intellectuals have a self-understanding of themselves as the conscience of humanity,” said the Middle East scholar Norman Finkelstein. “They revel in and admire someone like Vaclav Havel. Chomsky is contemptuous of Havel. Chomsky embraces the Julien Benda view of the world. There are two sets of principles. They are the principles of power and privilege and the principles of truth and justice. If you pursue truth and justice it will always mean a diminution of power and privilege. If you pursue power and privilege it will always be at the expense of truth and justice. Benda says that the credo of any true intellectual has to be, as Christ said, ‘my kingdom is not of this world.’ Chomsky exposes the pretenses of those who claim to be the bearers of truth and justice. He shows that in fact these intellectuals are the bearers of power and privilege and all the evil that attends it.”

“Some of Chomsky’s books will consist of things like analyzing the misrepresentations of the Arias plan in Central America, and he will devote 200 pages to it,” Finkelstein said. “And two years later, who will have heard of Oscar Arias? It causes you to wonder would Chomsky have been wiser to write things on a grander scale, things with a more enduring quality so that you read them forty or sixty years later. This is what Russell did in books like ‘Marriage and Morals.’ Can you even read any longer what Chomsky wrote on Vietnam and Central America? The answer has to often be no. This tells you something about him. He is not writing for ego. If he were writing for ego he would have written in a grand style that would have buttressed his legacy. He is writing because he wants to effect political change. He cares about the lives of people and there the details count. He is trying to refute the daily lies spewed out by the establishment media. He could have devoted his time to writing philosophical treatises that would have endured like Kant or Russell. But he invested in the tiny details which make a difference to win a political battle.”

“I try to encourage people to think for themselves, to question standard assumptions,” Chomsky said when asked about his goals. “Don’t take assumptions for granted. Begin by taking a skeptical attitude toward anything that is conventional wisdom. Make it justify itself. It usually can’t. Be willing to ask questions about what is taken for granted. Try to think things through for yourself. There is plenty of information. You have got to learn how to judge, evaluate and compare it with other things. You have to take some things on trust or you can’t survive. But if there is something significant and important don’t take it on trust. As soon as you read anything that is anonymous you should immediately distrust it. If you read in the newspapers that Iran is defying the international community, ask who is the international community? India is opposed to sanctions. China is opposed to sanctions. Brazil is opposed to sanctions. The Non-Aligned Movement is vigorously opposed to sanctions and has been for years. Who is the international community? It is Washington and anyone who happens to agree with it. You can figure that out, but you have to do work. It is the same on issue after issue.”

Chomsky’s courage to speak on behalf of those, such as the Palestinians, whose suffering is often minimized or ignored in mass culture, holds up the possibility of the moral life. And, perhaps even more than his scholarship, his example of intellectual and moral independence sustains all who defy the cant of the crowd to speak the truth.

“I cannot tell you how many people, myself included, and this is not hyperbole, whose lives were changed by him,” said Finkelstein, who has been driven out of several university posts for his intellectual courage and independence. “Were it not for Chomsky I would have long ago succumbed. I was beaten and battered in my professional life. It was only the knowledge that one of the greatest minds in human history has faith in me that compensates for this constant, relentless and vicious battering. There are many people who are considered nonentities, the so-called little people of this world, who suddenly get an e-mail from Noam Chomsky. It breathes new life into you. Chomsky has stirred many, many people to realize a level of their potential that would forever be lost.”

May we have enough hope and faith in one another to act courageously for a bold new world.

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His exacting integrityWas seeded only by generosity of heartHe lovedAwe of God’s childrenAs wellAs he kinHe planted seedsThat others would harvestHe worked side by sideUnder God’s reignAnd the radiance of a singular SonToday the earth is a little less saltyYet let our tears renewOur taste for justiceAnd peace unearth

Chester “Chet” Chambers died October 4, 2016, at the age of 87. Chet was a good man; though, like Jesus, Chet may very well have responded to such an assertion with: “Why do you call me good? “No one is good — except God alone.” [Mark 10:18] His good works were cloaked in humility, yet any person of good will would testify to his deep and abiding faith in God and humanity, God’s precious children.

Chet was a friend, neighbor, fellow activist, and life-long United Methodist. His life touched so many other lives. All of our lives are better because of Chet; the fortunate are aware of this. He will be missed by many. His life, ministry, and example will echo into eternity.

Here is the obituary for Chester Chambers, as published in The Toledo Blade on Oct. 6, 2016:

Chester Chambers, born December 2, 1928, passed October 4, 2016. He grew up in Luckey, Ohio, where the Methodist church was the central activity of his family. He graduated from Ohio Northern University, where he took a pre-chemical engineering course of study. He was involved with the Ohio Methodist Student Movement, and following his junior year decided on ministry.

He went to Garrett Theological seminary on the campus of Northwestern University in 1949, where he gained a deep understanding of John Wesley’s theology and experience of grace. Following up on ideas and contacts gained through OMSM in undergrad, he became involved in the civil rights movement in the Chicago area.

While working as a student charge at Weston Church in the summer of 1951, he met Donna Fast, then a nurse in the Bowling Green hospital. They married a year later. He served at Mt. Blanchard five years before moving to Toledo in 1962 to pastor two inner-city parishes in the old north end.

In 1969 he was appointed Coordinator of Urban Ministries for the Toledo District of the United Methodist Church (“UMC”). In succeeding years he helped develop an “alphabet soup” of over forty local organizations from the local ACLU to Welfare Task Force, with Fair Housing Center and Personal Rights Organization among the many in between. He had particular passions for racial justice, affordable housing, and acceptance of the LGBT community. As a minister and happily married father of five, he lent great credibility to the cause of same-sex oriented persons, at a time when societal attitudes and practices were far more negative and hostile and few spoke out to change that.

Chet made many fact-finding trips in later years. The poverty he witnessed on his first, to Nicaragua in 1989, was life-altering. He would return there, as well as go to Cuba, Brazil, Mexico (maquiladoras) and Venezuela.

He retired at least twice: after serving six years as Superintendent of the Findlay District (UMC) in 1996, and again in 2003 after serving as Associate Pastor of Monroe Street UMC in Toledo. He remained active in many groups and causes long after the “retirements,” including many annual protest trips to the School of the Americas at Ft. Benning, GA. He was arrested at least three times over the years, in various locales, for civil disobedience over causes he championed.

Chet was a master card player, and avid camper with his family. He played piano, sang, and rarely missed a Toledo Symphony concert. He was a mentor and role model for many; inclusive, empowering, grass-roots. His biblical and theological knowledge was immense, and undergirded most everything he did and said. He never stopped believing in God and humanity’s capacity for good.

He was preceded in death by his parents, Fred and Audrey Chambers, and is survived by his wife, Donna; children, Mark (Susan), Nathan (Clara), Brian (Debra), Kevin (Susan), Jocelyn (John) Blaufuss, and 12 grandchildren.

A celebration of Chet’s life will take place October 15, 11 a.m. at Monroe St. United Methodist Church.

Contributions may be made to Monroe St. Neighborhood Center, Methodist Federation for Social Action, or any organization helping the most vulnerable or working for social justice.

Rest in peace, friend to all and faithful servant.

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Have emptyHave fullPundit prognosticatingWeather tea town, big gulp, whine, or throwbackAfter workAll a buzzA bout how well suited politiciansRe-billed a city of denimPutting out hopeIn efface of houses emptiedAnd streets fullOf potholesTeeming with orange barrelsAnd every fuel for ToledoEver wandering, “Will we be Jeeped or not?”For what’s frog town without croaking? That looming willWe be relegated community?Wholly Toledo, some kind of perfect zooAnd a world class heart museumWhere boosters must incurably cry outI think not!Know!This is the biggest little town in AmericaAnd those a little too full of itHead for the HillsAs ifThey due butterWhen you can’t beat the accost of livingOf those in the noIf have full, drink upIf have empty, just wait a roundThe Glass City is refillable

I was hoping to win thirst prize with this Toledo poem, as my singular entry into the 2016 annual Poetry and Fiction contest of the Toledo City Paper: Half Full or Half Empty. But, alas, I am truly settle for placement in a category called Dishonorable Mention. This poem, about my beloved Toledo, reflects the self-deprecating, love-hate relationship that many Toledoans have with our esteemed town and occasionally reviled city. The editor only had one question about my seriously playful, pun-filled wordplay: Was “A bout” my intended spelling. As most often is the case when someone is confused about how to read my poems, the answer is: “Yes.” There are many takes on the half-full/half-empty question. I find that the glass being refillable is the most appropriate and truly hopeful answer. I consider Toledo as the hidden gem of the Midwest, perhaps of the whole country. But, please, keep this on the down-low. We don’t want a bunch of Toledo wannabes cluttering up the city.

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Human rights are universal and inalienable, meaning that such rights cannot be taken away based on what people do. Human rights are interdependent and indivisible, meaning that they work together as a whole, where the deprivation of anyone’s human right deprives us all, and the enhancement of anyone’s human rights enhances us all. Human rights are equal and nondiscriminatory, meaning that they apply equally regardless of whatever our nationality, place of residence, sex, gender, national or ethnic origin, color, religion, language, or any other status. Finally, human rights give rise to a fundamental responsibility to protect and promote human rights both for humans and their governments.

In 1948, the United Nations passed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The declaration had been drafted by representatives from around the world, coming from many different legal and cultural perspectives. Since then, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has set the world record for the document translated into the most languages: 477.

The declaration has stood up quite well across its eight decades spanning two millennia, though I would better incorporate LGBTQ rights and change the document’s pronouns to gender neutral.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Preamble

Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,

Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,

Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,

Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,

Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,

Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.

Article 1.

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2.

Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Article 3.

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Article 4.

No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

Article 5.

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Article 6.

Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

Article 7.

All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

Article 8.

Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.

Article 9.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

Article 10.

Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.

Article 11.

(1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.
(2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.

Article 12.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Article 13.

(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

Article 14.

(1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.
(2) This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 15.

(1) Everyone has the right to a nationality.
(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

Article 16.

(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

Article 17.

(1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

Article 18.

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Article 19.

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Article 20.

(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
(2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

Article 21.

(1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.
(2) Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.
(3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

Article 22.

Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

Article 23.

(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Article 24.

Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

Article 25.

(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Article 26.

(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
(2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
(3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

Article 27.

(1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Article 28.

Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

Article 29.

(1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.
(2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.
(3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 30.

Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

May we each individually and collectively cherish our human rights as the foundation from which our humanity is ever more fully manifest. One humanity. One planet. One love.

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IF you want a progressive presidential candidate that you can get excited about voting FOR, then Jill Stein, the Green Party presidential candidate is worth serious consideration. Jill Stein has selected her Green Party running mate, Vice President choice, Ajamu Baraka. Mr. Baraka is an internationally recognized human rights activist, organizer and geo-political analyst with a deeply progressive resume. Here is their platform:

Jill Stein 2016 Platform

Our Power to the People Plan

Enact an emergency Green New Deal to turn the tide on climate change, revive the economy and make wars for oil obsolete. Initiate a WWII-scale national mobilization to halt climate change, the greatest threat to humanity in our history. Create 20 million jobs by transitioning to 100% clean renewable energy by 2030, and investing in public transit, sustainable agriculture, conservation and restoration of critical infrastructure, including ecosystems.

Implement a Just Transition that empowers those communities and workers most impacted by climate change and the transition to a green economy. Ensure that any worker displaced by the shift away from fossil fuels will receive full income and benefits as they transition to alternative work.

Enact energy democracy based on public, community and worker ownership of our energy system. Treat energy as a human right.

Redirect research funds from fossil fuels into renewable energy and conservation. Build a nationwide smart electricity grid that can pool and store power from a diversity of renewable sources, giving the nation clean, democratically-controlled, energy.

End destructive energy extraction and associated infrastructure: fracking, tar sands, offshore drilling, oil trains, mountaintop removal, natural gas pipelines, and uranium mines. Halt any investment in fossil fuel infrastructure, including natural gas, and phase out all fossil fuel power plants. Phase out nuclear power and end nuclear subsidies. End all subsidies for fossil fuels and impose a greenhouse gas fee / tax to charge polluters for the damage they have created.

Protect our public lands, water supplies, biological diversity, parks, and pollinators. Ban neonicotinoids and other pesticides that threaten the survival of bees, butterflies, and other pollinators.

Support a strong enforceable global climate treaty that limits global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius and provides just financial compensation to developing countries.

Label GMOs, and put a moratorium on GMOs and pesticides until they are proven safe.

Support organic and regenerative agriculture, permaculture, and sustainable forestry.

Protect the rights of future generations. Adopt the Precautionary Principle. When an activity poses threats of harm to human health or the environment, in the absence of objective scientific consensus that it is safe, precautionary measures should be taken. The proponent of an activity, rather than the public, should bear the burden of proof.

Invest in clean air, water, food and soil for everyone. Clean up America.

Enact stronger environmental justice laws and measures to ensure that low-income and communities of color are not disproportionately impacted by harmful pollution and other negative environmental and health effects.

Support conversion to sustainable, nontoxic materials and the use of closed-loop, zero waste processes.

Create living-wage jobs for every American who needs work, replacing unemployment offices with employment offices. Government would be the employer of last resort, and the unemployed would have an enforceable right to make government provide work. Create direct public employment, as the Works Progress Administration did, in public services and public works for those who can’t find private employment.

Advance workers’ rights to form unions, achieve workplace democracy, and keep a fair share of the wealth they create.

Enact the Green Deal full employment program to create 20 million green jobs in sustainable energy, mass transit, sustainable organic agriculture, clean manufacturing and improved infrastructure, as well as social work, teaching, health care, after school and home care, drug rehabilitation and other service jobs.

Provide grants and low-interest loans to green businesses and cooperatives, with an emphasis on small, locally-based companies that keep the wealth created by local labor circulating in the community, rather than being drained off to enrich absentee investors.

Replace NAFTA and other corporate free trade agreements that export American jobs, depress wages, and undermine the sovereign right of Americans and citizens of other countries to control their own economy and political choices. Enact fair trade laws that benefits local workers and communities.

Repeal the Taft-Hartley Act which banned secondary boycotts and permitted state “right-to-work” laws. Enact a federal just cause law (to prohibit firing without just cause,) and outlaw scabbing on striking workers.

End Poverty:

Guarantee economic human rights, including access to food, water, housing, and utilities, with effective anti-poverty programs to ensure every American a life of dignity.

Establish a guaranteed minimum income.

Reform public assistance to be a true safety net that empowers participants and provides a decent standard of living.

Free universal child care.

Health Care as a Right:

Establish an improved “Medicare for All” single-payer public health program to provide everyone with quality health care, at huge savings by eliminating the $400 billion annually spent on the paperwork and bureaucracy of health insurance. No co-pays, premiums or deductibles. Access to all health care services, including mental health, dental, and vision. Include everyone, period. No restrictions based on pre-existing illness, employment, immigration status, age, or any other category.

Eliminate the cancer of health insurance, which adds costs while reducing access to health care.

End overcharging for prescription drugs by using bulk purchasing negotiations.

Eliminate health disparities in communities of color and low-income communities. Ensure easy access to health care in communities of color, including community health centers.

Avoid chronic diseases by investing in essential community health infrastructure such as local, fresh, organic food systems, pollution-free renewable energy, phasing out toxic chemicals, and active transportation such as bike paths and safe sidewalks that dovetail with public transit.

Ensure that consumers have essential information for making informed food choices by expanding product labeling requirements for country of origin, GMO content, toxic chemical ingredients, and fair trade practices.

Guarantee tuition-free, world-class public education from pre-school through university.

Abolish student debt to free a generation of Americans from debt servitude.

Protect our public school systems from privatization.

Use restorative justice to address conflicts before they occur, and involve students in the process.

Evaluate teacher performance through assessment by fellow professionals. Do not rely on high stakes tests that reflect economic status of the community, and punish teachers working in low income communities of color.

Replace Common Core with curriculum developed by educators, not corporations, with input from parents and communities.

Stop denying students diplomas based on high stakes tests.

Stop using merit pay to punish teachers who work with the most challenging student populations.

Restore arts, music and recreation to school curriculums.

Ensure racially inclusive, sensitive and relevant curriculums.

Use Department of Education powers to offer grants and funding to encourage metropolitan desegregation plans based on socioeconomically balanced schools.

Recognize poverty as the key obstacle to learning. Ensure that kids come to school ready to learn: healthy, nourished, secure and free from violence.

Increase federal funding of public schools to equalize public school funding.

Support immigrants’ rights. Create a welcoming path to citizenship for immigrants.

Halt deportations and detentions of law-abiding undocumented immigrants, including the shameful practice of night raids being used to terrorize refugee families.

Improve economic and social conditions abroad to reduce the flow of immigrant refugees, in part by repealing NAFTA, ending the failed drug wars, and halting CIA and military interventions against democratically elected governments.

Demilitarize border crossings throughout North America.

Protect the free Internet. Oppose the Online Piracy Act and all other legislation that would undermine freedom and equality on the Internet.

Criminal Justice Reforms

End the failed war on drugs. Replace drug prohibition with harm reduction. Legalize marijuana/hemp. Treat substance abuse as a health problem, not a criminal offense.

Release nonviolent drug offenders from prison, removing such offenses from their records, and provide them with both pre- and post-release support.

Demilitarize police. End use of SWAT teams and no-knock raids for drugs and serving papers.

Repair our communities rather than dump resources into the prison-industrial complex.

Establish police review boards so that communities control their police, and not the other way around. Appoint dedicated investigators to investigate every death or serious injury at the hands of police.

Enact laws to require independent outside legal representatives to investigate and prosecute any killing or brutality by the police rather than prosecutors involved in the local criminal justice system.

Eliminate harsh mandatory sentencing requirements which often result in unjustified sentences.

Enforce the Bill of Rights by protecting the right to free speech and protest, to be secure from unwarranted search and seizure and invasion of privacy, as well as our other Constitutional rights.

Terminate unconstitutional surveillance and unwarranted spying, close Guantanamo, and repeal indefinite detention without charge or trial. Repeal the unconstitutional provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act that give the president the power to indefinitely imprison and even assassinate American citizens without due process.

America’s youth should not be put in jail for offenses they commit.

End discrimination against former offenders who have paid for their crimes and should get a fresh start.

Abolish the death penalty.

End persecution of government, corporate and media whistleblowers.

Issue an Executive Order prohibiting Federal agencies from conspiring with local police to infringe upon right of assembly and peaceful protest.

Repeal the Patriot Act that violates our constitutional right to privacy and protection against unreasonable search and seizure.

Peace and Human Rights:

Establish a foreign policy based on diplomacy, international law, human rights, and nonviolent support for democratic movements around the world.

Cut military spending by at least 50% and close the 700+ foreign military bases. Ensure a just transition that replaces reductions in military jobs with jobs in renewable energy, transportation and green infrastructure development.

Stop U.S. financial and military support to human rights abusers. Barring substantial changes in their policies, this would include Saudi Arabia, Israel and Egypt.

End the US’ role as the world’s arm supplier.

End use of assassination as an instrument of U.S. foreign policy, including collaborative assassination through intermediaries.

End the destructive US economic and military intervention into the affairs of sovereign nations. Such intervention serve the interests of multinational corporations and global capitalism over the interests of the vast majority of the citizens of those nations.

Freeze the bank accounts of countries that are funding terrorism, including the Saudi royal family.

Ban use of drone aircraft for assassination, bombing, and other offensive purposes.

End the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, withdrawing troops and military contractors.

Join 159 other nations in signing the Ottawa treaty banning the use of anti-personnel land mines.

Lead on global nuclear disarmament:

Rejoin the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which the US dropped out of in 2002 when it installed missiles and missile bases in Turkey, Romania, and Poland.

Agree to Russia’s proposal to jointly reduce US and Russian nuclear arsenals to 1,000 nuclear weapons each. Also call for all countries to the table to negotiate a treaty for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons.

Remove US nuclear weapons in Germany, Belgium, Turkey, Italy and the Netherlands.

Support Russia and China’s joint effort to open negotiations on a treaty to ban weapons in space.

Pledge to end any further laboratory or sub-critical nuclear tests at the Nevada and Novaya Zemlya test sites, and end all nuclear weapons research, design, and modernization at the weapons laboratories.

The US must take the lead in nuclear disarmament by itself starting to disarm. We should create a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East region and require all nations in the area to join.

Eliminate the doctrine of corporate personhood that among other things has been used to justify unlimited corporate spending in elections with a constitutional amendment to clarify that only human beings have constitutional rights.

Protect voters’ rights by enforcing and expanding the constitutional right to vote (including a new amendment if necessary). Enact the full Voter’s Bill of Rights guaranteeing each person’s right to vote, the right to have our votes counted on hand-marked paper ballots, and the right to vote within systems that give each vote meaning. Make voter registration the responsibility of government, not a voluntary opt-in for citizens.

Restore Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, requiring preclearance by the Attorney General or federal district court of DC to election law changes in areas previously found to limit voting rights.

Abolish the Electoral College and directly elect the President using a national popular vote with ranked-choice voting..

Restore the right to run for office and eliminate unopposed races by removing ballot access barriers.

Guarantee equal access to the debates to all ballot-qualified candidates.

Provide equal and free access to the airways for all ballot-qualified candidates, not just those with big campaign war chests.

Eliminate “winner take all / first past the post” elections in which the “winner” may not have the support of most of the voters. Replace that system with ranked choice voting and proportional representation.

Enact statehood for the District of Columbia to ensure the region has full representation in Congress, and full powers of democratic self-rule.

Establish federal, state, and municipal publicly-owned banks that function as non-profit utilities and focus on helping people, not enriching themselves.

Create a Corporation for Economic Democracy, a new federal corporation (like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting) to provide publicity, training, education, and direct financing for cooperative development and for democratic reforms to make government agencies, private associations, and business enterprises more participatory.

Democratize monetary policy to bring about public control of the money supply and credit creation. This means nationalizing the private bank-dominated Federal Reserve Banks and placing them under a Federal Monetary Authority within the Treasury Department. Prohibit private banks from creating money, thus restoring government’s Constitutional authority.

Offer capital grants to non-profit developers of affordable housing until all people can obtain decent housing at no more than 25% of their income.

Create a federal bank with local branches to take over homes with distressed mortgages, and either restructure the mortgages to affordable levels, or if the occupants cannot afford a mortgage, rent homes to the occupants.

Expand rental and home ownership assistance and increase funding for public housing.

Use Department of Housing and Urban Development authority to grant or withhold funds in order to encourage state and local governments to take positive steps to desegregate housing, including ending zoning laws that effectively prohibit multi-family housing, prohibiting landlords from refusing to accept Section 8 vouchers, increasing Section 8 voucher amounts so that poor people can move into middle income neighborhoods, prohibiting the use of Low Income Housing Tax Credits to increase low income housing in already segregated neighborhoods, and building new public housing in middle income communities that is high quality and mixed income.

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POEM: Cautionary TailOuch!
That guy should come with a warning label
She said after
Having had
A piece of cautionary tail
You can divide life's lessons into two basic categories: 1) that which ...

Corporate Wall FallsYesterday, as the closing ceremony of Occupy Toledo's May Day Fest, between two and 2,000 people gathered to tear down "The Wall," symbolizing corporate mis-rule and oppression. ...

This poem parlays my slight dyslexia in word play with the title, “Nobodies Prefect.” “Prefect,” posing as a misspelling of perfect, is a government official responsible for a particular political juris diction. This plays with the truism that prefects and politicians of all types offer an endless series of compromises to our aspiring humanity. This anarchist poem recognizes that “nobodies” are, in fact, the foundation for all personal and political power in human communities. Anarchists are masters of their own domain, not making themselves subject to the rule of impersonal institutions and the governors who shield their humanity behind them. Any power of larger institutions and their elected or unelected governors is derived by the consent of people. Withdrawing consent from illegitimate governance is the most noted characteristic, albeit stereotypical, of anarchists. This withdrawal of illegitimate rule gives rise to the archetypal rebellion assigned to anarchism. Of course, the positive ideals of self-governance, voluntary association within smaller scale communities, as well as mutual aid and solidarity, give rise to more organic, thus legitimately human, relationships. Shifting power toward smaller scale, decentralized, human relationships focused on basic needs alludes to the place from which anarchists view the source of legitimate authority. By focusing and valuing direct, unmediated human relationships, anarchists show respect for sustainability based upon personal accountability and trust/integrity rather than rule-based accountability and so-called “impartial” enforcement. Sustainability of human communities are founded upon personal accountability and trust/integrity more so than impersonal institutional structures or inertia. The quest for larger scale power is inextricably intertwined with choosing impersonal, dead structures over living beings, human and otherwise (corporate “persons” not included). At larger, impersonal scales, people become more like tools than the awesomely beautiful artisans humans are most truly. A primary tool for turning people into tools is to socialize people into being subservient to impersonal structures or systems. Such alleged objectivity is the enemy of subjects, training people to serve things or idealized and impersonal systems. At least in some sense, anarchism is an anti-ideology ideology, recognizing that any ideology, including anything called anarchism, is a dangerous, deathly substitute for our vibrant and living humanity. Meeting other humans as humans is the essential nourishment of anarchism. The starving or weeding out of the inhumane and impersonal serves as its primary tool in its relationship with the inhuman and anti-human. May we each relish the humanity of each other and refuse to bow to inhuman and impersonal farces posing as a worthy substitute for our humanity.

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POEM: Near Life ExperienceI once had a near-life experience
but that's another story
I like this funny two-line poem because it turns around the mysterious fascination with near-death experiences. ...

POEM: Anew Page DeliveringI am
Subject too
The very inquisition
Wanting too a void
Axing the quest in
Who would halve me
Believe
Know
One
Wrote
The book
In my heart
Anything but stone
Nothing ...

POEM: Creator of Heaven UnearthOh God
Awe might he
Creator of heaven unearth
Your sun trying to peer through
What is mirrorly mist
Between every human face
Won and the same
Unending cycles
Set up for ...

POEM: Unoriginal SinThirst thing in the mourning
Adam collided with Adam
Agin and agin
As taken aback
As it was a hit
Necessitating an equal
Yet opposite reaction
Recoiling for time in ...

The Poor Have Suffered EnoughThe Poor Have Suffered Enough-POLITICAL BUTTON
The Poor Have Suffered Enough-POLITICAL BUTTON
This cool design is linked to a button, but other great Top Pun products like ...

POEM: Present DazeGod invented the eight hour day
But buy popular demand
Parently beyond what could ever be yearned
The ardor one tries
Only leaves won
With more or less
Wanting more our
In ...

Here is my ode to the victims and survivors of the Orlando massacre. May this brutal assault on LGBT folks and their few safe places to congregate help spark a priceless awakening to the love that we all deserve and a sober recognition that we all-too-often do not receive such love.

POEM: Evolution of a WriterEvolution of a Writer
You have evolved into quite a writer
Could you write something for my company?
He solicited
Presumably thinking
I was still into monkey business
Not ...

POEM: The Lost Heart of WoreDave lost his head
On the edge of barbarism
Shariq found his blown to pieces
On the edge of civilization
Savage swordplay and droning videogames
Medieval meets modern
Death ...

POEM: RutherfordRutherford was a man
Whose cruelty was only
Acceded by his ignorance
And all kinds of people
Parted with his presence
A gift to know one
Leased of awe himself
And if you ...

POEM: Life As A BreezeLife peers to me
As a gentle breeze
With fragrant harmonies
In the tenderest victories
Know longer bought a bout by yielding hope
Prospecting in rock
Dead set, vane ...

Their raw youth
Was tenderly witnessed
By age owed eyes
In awe
Their awkward glory
Surpassing polished learning
More than could ever anew

This poem is a reminder to both young and old about the raw beauty of youth, the vim and vigor, dream-filled ebullience, and grace-filled awkwardness. This poem can be understood without additional context, though the title — A Choiring, Raw Youth — is perhaps both a clue and enigma. This poem was inspired by a high school choir performing at the retirement community where my dad lives. I was youthful in compare to the rest of the audience, but, I am at that age where high school kids look look younger every year — and eventually either they or I will be issued diapers! The experience and perspective of age — age owed eyes — may be uniquely able to appreciate the stunning juxtaposition of adolescent awkwardness and untainted talent. For me, this elicited great compassion and hope. It is a rare day that I would trade age for youth. Though I frequently quip that youth is wasted on the young. Still, even this quip is a cloaked compliment at the glory of youth, in awe of its awkwardness and blooming energy. Their performance made a home for joy. And as they headed out into the world, I trust that their freshness will continue to make this place we call earth ever anew. I was bettered by the presence of their performance. May people of awe ages give way to their fresh hope and awkward glory.

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POEM: In Jesting Another Triple CrownAmerica's quest for monarchy
Failed again
A triple crown thwarted
The quest for total domination
Foundering
Another cracker jack faux
A for-see-able sir prize
Californian ...

Feeling Clean and Safe in Downtown ToledoLast Friday, while making a sweep of sign posting for Occupy Toledo, I had an encounter with the Clean and Safe Patrol. Apparently, the Clean and Safe Patrol is an arm of the ...

POEM: Fully Human When Wholly DivineFrom wear
You ask
Came quiet
A storm
At the end
Of won's rope
The blest piece
Ever no'ing still
Falling in too
A death too small to handle
A life too big to ...

POEM: The Human Race Is Not Well DoneThe human race
Is
Not
Well
Done
I like the short poem because in seven words in five lines it can be read several different ways. The human race can be seen both as a ...

POEM: Trust is the GlueTrust is the glue
Sticking me to you
The favored few
The spoils of many
Consume mating
The fool
Faith and credit
Of US
Divining
Kindly mirror
Or unwelcome truth
A ...

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blahThe news drones onMassaging and spinning Disembodied heads a topHeartless ‘n titties in dis cursive and desultry meansTemperately flailing to wake usFrom our terrorific slumberOur tired and true rejoinderHit the snoozeYes! In the land of nodObey the well-dressed anchorAround your neckNothing to see, hear!Accept properly-placed comasOverlooking a legion of meaningsThat mightArise from our sideMaddened moreBy head lines in-graveAs face each mournNot up to catching forty hoodwinksBefore rolling over and playing deadTo any smooth promise posedTo have done with the etched of the earthPenned in stoneFashioned to suture selfWith the bounty of some spell binding medium Ripped at the seemQuipped with stupefying farceAs the wise crackHumanity snapping to a tension‘n snare with each punch line It’s how the net worksNaughtTo see the catchRe-lying on day-old knewsIn abiding woreFor flagging ardorAnd uniform fatiguesAm bushedAnd each recurring brake of dazePared with a new assaultTo be takenWith agreein’Ennui start all over agin

The news as imperfected by the American media conglomerates may represent the most distant information and perspective in acquiring and harmonizing with timeless truths. This incongruence between timeliness and timelessness is a form of endemic violence perpetuated on the American public. What bleeds leads, and awe is vanity. Flittering from superficial story to superficial story leaves the cursory public interest unattended too. The veil of objectivity alludes responsibility. The conveniently hidden agenda of corporate interests routinely protects itself from authentic critique. Useful as chain mail, amid evil sensibility is safeguarded for the lords of the manner. Civility hijacks dissent. Of coarse, vulgar opinion poses handily as master debating.

I find an antidote to such blindness-producing jerks, listening to Democracy Now (DemocracyNow.org) every weekday. This bastion of independent media provides in-depth coverage of real issues and real people, speaking truth to power every broadcast. Also, I relish the launching of Toledo’s own independent, noncommercial radio station, WAKT 106.1 FM, this July. This radio station will provide locally-produced content free from commercial interests. My public health show, Just for the Health of it, will take on corporate health interests to aid and abet local folks in powering up their own health, the health of our community, and the health of our planet.

May you find meaningful and uplifting sources of news and information, good for awe.

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POEM: Bell of the Bawl: Owed To GaiaAn ocean of salty water rises
From the cries unheard
Submerging from the wounds of the body politic
Stupefied in the face of enduring smarts
Delugings egressing from a tsunami ...

POEM: Text Message From RumiI got a text message from Rumi:
big screen tv died
whole world looks like 3D
brb
That was over a thousand years ago
Real life is infinitely more fascinating than virtual ...

POEM: Escaping HubrisIndigency is the quickest road
Out of hubris
Few of us can afford
Its high price
Hubris, or arrogance, is powerfully seductive in the human mind. This excessive ...

Another martyr bides the dustAnd I was a strayBeside myselfIn the fogOf yet another mourningThe missed over my heartFeeling only that ephemeral beatenThe wait on my brainFueled into thinking of the dread onlyAnd the little I noOf what remainsAs the truth is baredIn ash holes with namesTemping to soilWon an other’s life workUn-till arising from hour groundingReady ourselves for a human raceWear blood is thicker then waterTearing at our solesAnd water thicker than heirThe salt of the earth bidesIt’s timeToo clear the weighOf what thou dustAhead razed for aweAs be holding the sons raysBringing a bout of sunshineAn enduring lightnessOut shiningAny fauxHow ever clan destineIn efface of such shrouding allowedIn countering any illicit cloutEver loomingWhatever we’veGot togetherWith standing any in thralling strayin’Rapping up awe that is frayedFor whatever may seamKnow longer

I wrote this poem a while back, but I’m publishing it now to honor the passing of Father Daniel Berrigan who died over the weekend at age 94. Father Daniel Berrigan was the first priest arrested for peace and anti-war civil disobedience — or holy obedience. As recounted in the National Catholic Review:

Berrigan undoubtedly stands among the most influential American Jesuits of the past century…

A literary giant in his own right, Berrigan was best known for his dramatic acts of civil disobedience against the Vietnam War and nuclear weapons. He burned draft files with homemade napalm and later hammered on nuclear weapons to enact the Isaiah prophecy to “beat swords into plowshares.” His actions challenged Americans and Catholics to reexamine their relationship with the state and reject militarism. He constantly asked himself and others: What does the Gospel demand of us?

“For me, Father Daniel Berrigan is Jesus as a poet,” Kurt Vonnegut wrote. “If this be heresy, make the most of it.”

“Dorothy Day taught me more than all the theologians,” Berrigan told The Nation in 2008. “She awakened me to connections I had not thought of or been instructed in—the equation of human misery and poverty with warmaking. She had a basic hope that God created the world with enough for everyone, but there was not enough for everyone and warmaking.”

In 1963, Berrigan embarked on a year of travel, spending time in France, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rome, South Africa and the Soviet Union. He encountered despair among French Jesuits related to the situation of Indochina, as the United States ramped up military involvement in Vietnam.

Berrigan returned home in 1964 convinced that the war in Vietnam “could only grow worse.” So he began, he later wrote, “as loudly as I could, to say ‘no’ to the war…. There would be simply no turning back.”

He co-founded the Catholic Peace Fellowship and the interfaith group Clergy and Laity Concerned about Vietnam…

In Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (1966), Merton described Berrigan as “an altogether winning and warm intelligence and a man who, I think, has more than anyone I have ever met the true wide-ranging and simple heart of the Jesuit: zeal, compassion, understanding, and uninhibited religious freedom. Just seeing him restores one’s hope in the Church.”

A dramatic year of assassinations and protests that shook the conscience of America, 1968 also proved to be a watershed year for Berrigan. In February, he flew to Hanoi, North Vietnam, with the historian Howard Zinn and assisted in the release of three captured U.S. pilots. On their first night in Hanoi, they awoke to an air-raid siren and U.S. bombs and had to find shelter.

As the United States continued to escalate the war, Berrigan worried that conventional protests had little chance of influencing government policy. His brother, Philip, then a Josephite priest, had already taken a much greater risk: In October 1967, he broke into a draft board office in Baltimore and poured blood on the draft files.

On May 17, 1968, the Berrigan brothers joined seven other Catholic peace activists in Catonsville, Md., where they took several hundreds of draft files from the local draft board and set them on fire in a nearby parking lot, using homemade napalm. Napalm is a flammable liquid that was used extensively by the United States in Vietnam.

Daniel said in a statement, “Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house. We could not, so help us God, do otherwise.”

Berrigan was tried and convicted for the action. When it came time for sentencing, however, he went underground and evaded the Federal Bureau of Investigation for four months.

“I knew I would be apprehended eventually,” he told America in an interview in 2009, “but I wanted to draw attention for as long as possible to the Vietnam War and to Nixon’s ordering military action in Cambodia.”

The F.B.I. finally apprehended him on Block Island, R.I., at the home of theologian William Stringfellow, in August 1970. He spent 18 months in Danbury federal prison, during which he and Philip appeared on the cover of Time magazine.

The brothers, lifelong recidivists, were far from finished.

On Sept. 9, 1980, Daniel and Philip joined seven others in busting into the General Electric missile plant in King of Prussia, Pa., where they hammered on an unarmed nuclear weapon—the first Plowshares action. They faced 10 years in prison for the action but were sentenced to time served.

In his courtroom testimony at the Plowshares trial, Berrigan described his daily confrontation with death as he accompanied the dying at St. Rose Cancer Home in New York City. He said the Plowshares action was connected with this ministry of facing death and struggling against it. In 1984, he began working at St. Vincent’s Hospital, New York City, where he ministered to men and women with H.I.V.-AIDS.

“It’s terrible for me to live in a time where I have nothing to say to human beings except, ‘Stop killing,’” he explained at the Plowshares trial. “There are other beautiful things that I would love to be saying to people.”

In 1997 he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Berrigan’s later years were devoted to Scripture study, writing, giving retreats, correspondence with friends and admirers, mentorship of young Jesuits and peace activists, and being an uncle to two generations of Berrigans. He published several biblical commentaries that blended scholarship with pastoral reflection and poetic wit.

“Berrigan is evidently incapable of writing a prosaic sentence,” biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann wrote in a review of Berrigan’s Genesis (2006). “He imitates his creator with his generative word that calls forth linkages and incongruities and opens spaces that bewilder and dazzle and summon the reader.”

Even as an octogenarian, Berrigan continued to protest, turning his attention to the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the prison in Guantánamo Bay and the Occupy Wall Street movement. Friends remember Berrigan as courageous and creative in love, a person of integrity who was willing to pay the price, a beacon of hope and a sensitive and caring friend.

While technically, Fr. Berrigan is not a martyr, he sacrificed much and lived courageously in the belly of the beast called the United States of America of which he called its militarism and imperialism.

While I wrote this poem with a male character, this may not be truly representative of the martyrs in this world. Soon after penning this poem, Berta Caceres, whose activism reverberated around the world, was assassinated by a Honduran death squad, shot in her own home. This poem is dedicated to her as well, a well of hope deeper than any dam corporations. As recounted from Alternet:

On March 3, assassins entered the home of Berta Caceres, leader of Honduras’ environmental and indigenous movement. They shot her friend Gustavo Castro Soto, the director of Friends of the Earth Mexico. He pretended to be dead, and so is the only witness of what came next. The assassins found Berta Caceres in another room and shot her in the chest, the stomach and the arms. When the assassins left the house, Castro went to Berta Caceres, who died in his arms.

Investigation into the death of Berta Caceres is unlikely to be conducted with seriousness. The Honduran government suggested swiftly that it was likely that Castro had killed Berta Caceres and made false statements about assassins. That he had no motive to kill his friend and political ally seemed irrelevant. Castro has taken refuge in the Mexican embassy in Honduras’ capital, Tegucigalpa. He continues to fear for his life.

Berta Caceres led the Popular and Indigenous Organisations of Honduras (COPINH), one of the most important critics of government and corporate power in her country. Most recently, she and COPINH had taken a strong stand against the construction of the Agua Zarca dam on a river sacred to the indigenous Lenca community. This dam had occupied her work. It was not merely a fight against an energy company, it was a fight against the entire Honduran elite.

Desarrollos Energeticos, SA (DESA) is owned by the Atala family, whose most famous member is Camilo Atala, who heads Honduras’ largest bank, Banco Ficohsa. By all indications, the Atala family is very close to the government. When the military moved against the democratically elected government of Manuel Zelaya Rosales in 2009, the Atala family, among others, supported the coup with their means. The Honduran sociologist Leticia Salomon listed this family among others as the enablers of the coup. They backed the conservative National Party, which now holds the reins of power alongside the military. Berta Caceres’ fight against the Agua Zarca dam, then, was not merely a fight against one dam. It was a battle against the entire Honduran oligarchy. Her assassination had, as her family contends, been long overdue.

May we be inspired and encouraged by the fearless lives of those who have gone before us.

POEM: Are You A Friend of Dorothy?As a friend of Dorothy Day
I wood ax
More than won quest in
A bout
Her call
As a tenet in passable saint hood
As if a priest to nun
Or mirror lay person
Aborting ...

POEM: Shooting StarYou are a shooting star
Enjoy it while you can
And may others look up
And see your light
The short poem focuses on the theme that life is short, yet it can be glorious. ...

POEM: Albatross Necklace FuturesI stared at the world
I could have built
Had I
Grasped more
Farce fully
A stock pile
Awe but reaching
Heaven
Falling short
Of mature stature
Leaving behind
Child's ...

POEM: Insane Asylum PatienceWhose violence is worse
They argued
The insane asylum patience
Condemning barbarism
As the strongest barbarians
Write history
And write makes right
Or sow it might
As ...

POEM: Subconscious Not What You ThinkDon't bother pondering the subconscious
It's not what you think
This funny poem is a reminder that much of what is life is not directly accessible by us. Most of what goes ...

I was mistakenAll those yearsThose sweetest oursThinking I was making loveWhen in truthLove was making me

This love poem, as most of my poems, can be read several ways. Of course, the simplest reading is a testament to the transformative power of romantic relationship love. Love is more than something that we, as individuals, “make.” Love is something larger than ourselves that we participate in. Love makes us better humans, much more so than could be designed by our minds however clever, or imagined by our hearts however large and open. Certainly, love makes us better than we could ever be outside of human relationships, on our own.

When thinking of poetry, I suspect that thinking of love poems is the most common and iconic. Love, the mystery of mysteries, is at the heart of poetry, trying to put into words that which can’t quite be put into words. I have described writing poetry as the heart and mind making love. The melding of the workings of the heart and mind is a struggle for balance and wholeness that pervades every human endeavor.

Psalm 85:10 describes this as peace and justice kissing. My intent in writing this poem was also to allude to such a wide theme, that of loving the world in a way that makes the world a better place for all. Peace and justice kissing is the way this becomes a reality in the world. Practicing that discipline of love makes us better humans, even if the reciprocity of that love is not immediately evident. Describing such ventures as love of God — love of Love — is a common spiritual discipline to carry us through the dry patches of of unrequited love on earth. Such love lives in the hope that the way of love (God’s will) will be “on earth as it is in heaven” (from the Lord’s prayer). Of course, the demands of justice are trans-generational, perhaps perpetual, requiring a patience and perspective beyond our own life. We don’t work simply for ourselves, that is if we are working in love and for justice. It strikes me, sometimes in the face, that love of enemy is the gold standard spiritual practice for melding peace and justice, holding fast to perfecting love, in creating a world where one side fits all. Every loving act brings us closer to peace and justice, no matter how far off they seem. Every loving act engenders hope and courage for both the gentle patience and bold courage needed for peace and justice to kiss. May you find love in every personal relationship, within your community, and in every conception of God you may have.

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POEM: Not Right in the HeadI am just
Not right
In the head
Just left
Of center
Heart beats
For know reason
To love
The mathematician, physicist and philosopher, Blaise Pascal, said, "The heart has ...

POEM: Naught For Prophet Fun RazingIn the crucible
Of the well-heeled
And the, well, heeled
He surrounded himself
With corporate persons
Naught for prophet organizations
Possessed buy a cutting edge currency ...

POEM: Getting Your Ducks in a RowI once put all my ducks in a row
Only then realizing
What am I doing with all these ducks?!
Getting one's ducks in a row is an idiom or metaphor that most people are ...

POEM: Changing KingsWhen I was a child
I crapped in my pants
Today I am a king in the world
Now I make others crap in their pants
This is the indigestible truth
Of too much power
That cannot be ...

We are surroundedBy corn fed politiciansWho don’t eat cornBut slaughter the herdFed only cornIn a round a bout weighIn realtyAnd capitol punishmentTheir hire powerContracts executionersTo deal with every unwieldy beefIf one is to get to the bottomOf their food chainIn locking up votesWith cheap gruelAnd patronizing jobsIt is enoughTo give you gasBut I’ll pass onThe magicOf any half dozenOf such human beansSo calledWith their meat and greetAs giant he goesStalk, stalk, stalkChop, chop, chopNothing left to axAccept the sky fallingAnd the eminent crashHour only comfortIn the succor borne this minuteThat they don’t know JackAs we get out ofDodge

Politicians make at least one thing easy; that is, to be cynical about politics. This poem melds an ecological and vegetarian theme topped off with a Jack and the beanstalk climax. Politicians often contract out their dirty work so they can maintain a veneer of respectability and civility. Of course, they may be lazy-ass cowards too. Radical politics often has two somewhat divergent strategies: 1) expose, confront, and bring down elitist and corrupt politicians and political systems, and 2) dodge the disastrous social consequences of power and money hungry politicians — along with nurturing humane and sustainable alternatives. Mainstream politics is largely about securing specific interests, better crumbs from the flesh-eating politicians. Usually its a lower level political crony handling the corn and crumb distribution. Radical politics is a more wholesale and holistic approach, recognizing that reforming a system that is fixed, not broken, needs to be fundamentally replaced. Thus, there is plenty of work for all, bringing down corrupt systems and building up new sets of human relationships and community that serve all, not simply an elite. Radicals are hold outs, rejecting the wholesale social contract that imprisons most people and holding out alternatives that can provide humane work and meaning for all. Rather than simply hoping that we don’t crash or waiting for a crash, radical politics erodes the power and authority of dehumanizing systems as a way of life. Plus, rather than simply trying to not be the next one to get the boot, radicals prepare for the reboot. May you live your life in such a way that when the flesh-eating politicians come for you, you can happily retort, “Eat me!” — ever working for that day when we won’t be food again.

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POEM: The Rein of HopeA tsunami of hope is coming
Are you preparing such a weigh?
Will you be caught looking
Through shot glasses
Only to be decked out with eyedroppers
For blood shot eyes, those ...

POEM: In The Scheme of ThingsFirst class was all
Most sold out
Withal more empty than seeming
Wanting even
Titanic eves
To match their daze
Equally unenlightened
Missing that sinking feeling
Drinking ...

Violence Protects the StateStephanie N. Van Hook, Executive Director of Metta Center for Nonviolence in Petaluma, California, has written a commentary in Znet on How Violence Protects the State. Here is ...

POEM: Howie Tried And TrueToo fine
The word
That was lust to him
As a gossamer knight he
Oh Howie tried
And true
Enough
Wading in silence
Only to peer
Parently from know wear
To meat
His every ...

POEM: The Wanders of LoveSow marvel as
Love wonders
Among uninhibited meadows
And the forgotten in down towns
Wile in difference razes
Its ugly ahead
Only out lusting
Less than a flower
And eyes ...

This poem is a takeoff on having a stroke, or in this case, multiple strokes…of genius. This poem is an ode to playfulness as a form of salvation from the lameness of politics. By playfully challenging virtually every ideology one can escape the death grip of political calculations. Also, such playfulness is both a means and an end to revitalize overly serious politics. Politics is important enough that being rendered unable not to speak is a useful affliction, as participation is key to vital community. Nonetheless, sparing oneself, and others, from the cynics of politics is reason enough to embrace awe and playfulness. The braininess of political operatives may be able to triangulate winning electoral strategies and even pretty enlightened politically correct platforms, but truth is more akin of joy than rightness. Politics tends to create as many problems as it solves. As Albert Einstein so aptly noted, “Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them.” May you be subject to multiple strokes of genius as an antidote for lame politics.

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POEM: Elephants Prey: Never ForgetWhat too due
Reguarding
Assault weepin's
With prey
Open season to ignore
Smack in the middle
Of the roam
Elephants
And cons of all sorts
In outraged equality
And dubious ...

POEM: An Aesthetic HopeIn anesthetizing hope
A certain author
Did what he thought was write
Sow cerebrally saying
Hope is not a feeling
Rather hope is an action
To wit I despond
This brakes down ...

POEM: Universe So VastI once asked God
Why did you make the universe so vast?
What were you possibly thinking?
And God said
I was kind of hoping
To have enough room
For all of the poetry yet to ...

Terminal Terminology: Redefining CANCERA recent news story about redefining cancer raises the issue of how powerful something becomes depending on what we call it. In this case, I call it "terminal terminology." ...

POEM: Adumbrating My Too SenseTeeming with errs
Their egos agin
They took their best shot
Sow prod of themselves
In citing
Your poetry makes no cents
As if
The golf between us
As driven in sanity
From ...

This poem strikes a familiar theme of mine, the parent elusiveness of God and the unsophisticated ways of even daring to speak of such things from most any perspective brought to bear. The dark side of religion has wreaked hellish trauma, bludgeoning both real people and tender hope for sublime understanding. Militants, that is fundamentalists, from both theist and atheist perspectives routinely bash each other. Religionists often infantalize atheists, and atheists are often eager to throw the baby out with the bathwater. My guess is that if theists and atheists got together and compiled all of the gods they don’t believe in, that there would be a pantheon of common ground. I view militancy, that is fundamentalism, as the primary divide, not theism and atheism. There are plenty of poor intentions and chronic misunderstandings to go around. As I see it, militancy bespeaks violence, that is a commitment to winning by creating losers, forever separated buy uncrossable divides in human life, terminally fighting over uncommon ground. Fundamentalism of all types reduces perpetual paradoxes and the centrality of metaphorical ways of seeing the higher aspects of life to small-minded literalism stuck arguing facts rather than truth and stiff-hearted relationships valuing right ideology over harmonious community. The siblings of truth and harmony, which are deep quests of theists and atheists, religion and science, or of anyone seeking to work out the seems of their worldview, knead less judgment and a sober patience unwilling to bury others in uncommon ground.

As in most conflicts, power and trust are the ultimate issues, or perhaps more to the point, abuses of power and trust. Personally, I am increasingly convinced that absolute power absolutely corrupts. Hell, I even believe God shares power in order to create a better overall world, that is not merely more benevolent and fair, but creates the very foundations for the highest human aspirations and shatters the ceiling of cosmological and worldly puppetry (and the inevitable puppet tiers). I experience my most human living on a small-scale, in community, where direct accountability to one another breeds well proportioned living. This brings humanity to power and builds trust seamlessly into the process. Such human-scaled enterprises are far more sane, represented by the encouraging movements to local — not loco. Large-scale enterprises are typically suited and tied in hubris, albeit the the finest hubris civilization can offer. Only such large-scale undertakings can globalize insanity alongside the endemic learned helplessness paralyzed in the reality of “how did we get here?!” In human community, power resides in people. Power in human community requires consent. Complicated — often called “civilized” — nonhuman mechanisms to consolidate power, typically under the auspices of creating “bigger and better” things, ultimately rely on people’s consent. This often does succeed in producing bigger things; though the better part, our humanity, commensurately suffers in the accelerating smallness and relative unimportance of people in such enterprises. Not surprisingly, people, not built for such inhumanity, become viewed as the problem, gumming up the efficient workings of the machine. Depressingly sow, our views of human nature are then tempted to align with the misanthropic view that people are less important than things — see corporate personhood. Withdraw consent and these nonhuman and inhuman structures and mechanism whither. This speaks to the importance of protest and noncooperation/resistance to appointed authorities of all unkinds. Opting out of institutional and corporate enterprises starves the beast and frees up time and life energies for building alternative human communities. Active noncooperation and resistance naturally arise as the dominant and dominating culture (sic) inevitably will clash with any growing culture (hopefully viral) that questions the sick assumptions and unearned trust of its immeasurable victims. In such a project, Jesus radicals, atheist anarchists, and sordid kinds of others can find common ground, fertile for reclaiming our humanity in a whirled of profit tiers. Let us not be distracted by our differences, but rather unite in disavowing all things undermining the human heart.

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I know of a man I never metA foe of mine, I can only betA very close impersonal friendTo my unknown needs he’s supposed to tendTo rehabilitate me from what to whatMaybe he’s a pure-bred and I’m only a muttWe make quite a pair‘cept it’s me in the poundYet he’s always aroundA thousand miles awayYet I can hear his voice“If charged you are guilty”“If hungry it’s your choice”

I wrote this poem in 1987 while imprisoned for my epic failure to register for the military draft. Below is a copy of the actual handwritten poem. I had the original taped on my office wall near my desk for years.

Draft registration was reinstated by President Jimmy Carter as a response to the Russians invading Afghanistan. Seems to me that invading Afghanistan would have been punishment enough. We had the opportunity to learn such as lesson later — or not. President Ronald Reagan, after breaking a campaign promise to abolish draft registration, continued it. I was in the first batch of young men subject to this new law in 1980. I spent the entire decade sparring with the world’s greatest military superpower, with a couple of years of probation and community service ending in 1989 — like I need the federal government to sentence me to community service! Out of the millions of young men in violation of this Military Selective Service Act, less than a dozen were convicted of such flagrancy; all were public in their opposition. Seems pretty pathetic for a so-called superpower. I didn’t learn my lessen.

I feel no need for vindication, but I do feel like I have now lived through a full cycle of history, and history is on my side, if you believe in sides, that is. While assuring my incarceration to make sure that I wasn’t around to not defend our homeland, the U.S. was training and equipping their version of freedom fighters, the likes of Osama bin Laden and the lesser known Frank N. Stein.

This poem is about President Ronald Reagan’s Attorney General, Edwin Meese III. Though there was a lot of competition, Ed Meese was only clearly beat out as the most pathetic administration crony by James Watt, Secretary of the Department of Interior, which Mr. Watt, in his signature suicidal hatred of government, wanted to abolish; though it’s still not entirely clear whether it was the department or the environment he wanted to destroy. Ed Meese was infamous for the two sayings recounted in the last two lines of my poem. In an astounding disavowal of the U.S. Constitution, Mr. Meese, claimed that most suspects can be rightly assumed to be guilty. Well, it’s not like he was the overseer of federal and constitutional law — sheesh! The other statement, out of the jurisdiction of even his ignorance, was that if people are hungry in America, it’s their choice. When I heard this, I could have swore that his little round belly shook when he laughed like a bowl full of jelly. Well, OK, it wasn’t his belly full of jelly.

I’ve made my choice, and 28 years later I’m still hungry for justice…

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HavingEvolvedToo keepEvery last wonOf this sophisticated speciousUnder opposable thumbsLike a perchIn a stream of consciousnessExecuting my porpoiseThe bestI can doA thwart on the phase of humanityThis avowing That it isJust usAnd by what meansCan we make a diffidenceOf that a ledgeToo dueJoining the crowdedSigning offOn thatCollective bargainAs weeAll a greedAs far as we reckonBunching upIn a scanty throngOf self-proclaimed wizzesIn the brook of lifeWhere awe is swillIn our out standing potable pottyIn the heat of augustQuenched Buy the patently fallsThat isNot soCrappyRequited in terminally wadingWho getsThe last wardFrom what sores thenOnly thenWhere naught else fallowsTo find oneselfIn silenceA loanYet not feeling soloIn factFeeling unrivalledCaching inEmpyreal centsFore that which isUnfallibleWithout rank RevoltingCaste a sideEven withoutEmpty congregationFor goingAs it is writtenUpon stationeryIn place of lifeWear awe is wonIn a corporeal mergerOf all that is ardorWith all that is lightEnrolled into oneThat mystical unionJoining artsAnd boundless tradesUniting aweIn a baptism of matchless flare Emerging from waterBesting the supposed finBy no less than two feetUprightOn wholly groundAccompanying sound soleIn the rarefied guardin’Of one constitutionalHeartwarmingly vein to sumCountless succeedingWith heir to breathe freelyLiving inThe hear and nowBeyond what can be herdNo longer weightingOnly to expireThat which is fleetingTrafficking in exclusionFlailing to seaThe catch allRecognizing eachTo be wonOf a kind

Here is a poem that plays with themes of the oneness of consciousness, the oneness of humanity, and the merging of the spiritual and physical realms. Of course, it begins with recognizing the sea of vanity that passes for much of so-called civilized life. Seeing past this pollution is a necessary precondition to more fully experience life’s ever-present gifts and freely give our unique selves to the world. This requires mastering letting go more-so than grasping. Letting go prepares us to receive the perpetual, dare I say eternal, stream of gifts available to us at any given moment. This process of freely receiving this veritable tsunami of presents is only possible when harmoniously matched with freely giving, letting go, which continues, reflects, and magnifies the true abundance in which we are awash. The difference between this process and the close-minded, close-hearted clinging and collecting of much of daily life is the difference between heaven and hell — perhaps even heaven and hell!

Giving and receiving is one of the central yin and yang of our lives. Much of the pain in life can be traced back to the felt need to keep account of all of the giving and receiving that is going on, and then expending precious energy (sometimes called ‘work’) attempting to make sure that the receiving side of our ledger is adequate. Then, when we have ‘enough,’ we can be gracious on the giving side. I suspect that how we answer the question with our lives, “how much is enough?” lies at the heart of how well we contribute to our shared humanity and shared reality. The harmonious yin and yang of giving and taking is often befuddled and turned upside down by a predominant (and ultimately dominating) focus on receiving, aka taking. This conundrum rests on how we answer the proverbial question of “which came first, the chicken or the egg?” — in this case, giving or taking. As any practiced Taoist would realize, these yin and yang questions are ultimately incomprehensible without a deep appreciation for balance, or, as the Taoist would say, complementariness. I think this is also why Buddhists are not big on origin or creation stories (‘egg’ stories); what we have at any given moment is much more important than accounting for where it came from. The Christian contribution to this dialogue is a focus on grace, that any giving on our part is only made possible by something outside our selves gracing us with anything to give. In the human experience, grace, and the gratitude that evolves from living in it, quite universally leads to more harmonious (happy) living. Our natural propensity toward accounting cannot escape the balance shit completely!

As a devotee of social justice, the problem of the balance sheet often consumes — or at least dominates — any conception of justice. I prefer to frame justice as harmony and injustice as disharmony. Both the way and the goal, the means and the ends, is peace (harmony). As one of my favorite pacifists, and fellow Hope College alumnus, A.J. Muste proclaimed, “There is no way to peace, peace is the way.” I see the chicken and egg argument about which comes first, peace or justice, as the divide between self and other; that is, injustice is typically described as conditions of disharmony outside one’s self, amongst the human community and our shared reality. The role we contribute to bringing justice into the world is one of bringing harmony. And as most any human would agree: you can’t give what you don’t have!

If you are still convinced that justice is fundamentally a balance sheet then ponder this: how can you possibly experience injustice if you came into the world on no account of your own, experience a measure of life, and return to nothing (or at least certainly not something less than something) — how can you ever be in debt? The only “debt” that we have is the positive reality that we have been given anything and everything we have. This is well captured by Alice Walker who declared, “Activism is my rent for living on this planet.” I see this debt as the foundation for any ethical system, a shared debt owed with each and every human, setting up solidarity as a fundamental shared human reality. This was eminently stated by Albert Schweitzer: “The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings.” Injustice can be viewed as some having more than others (earned/unearned more than others?) but any conception of this is still rooted (and must give just due) in the harmonious relationship between giving and receiving. Taking away, WAY different than receiving, is dishonoring the mystical ying-yang of giving and receiving, in whatever brand of accounting one might ascribe too. Any thought that re-framing your account of justice as “giving” justice to others might be well served by meditating on your dependable feeling when others want to give you their justice. While there are immature forms of resisting others actions “for our own good,” I suspect that resisting others taking our account is rightly and justly rooted (a gift of human nature) in the shared and absolute nature of each and every human being’s life as a sheer gift beyond merit. Fights about whose debt is bigger are probably best resolved by demonstrating the recognition of our own immeasurable debt. Albert Schweitzer also infamously said, “Example is not the main thing in influencing others, it is the only thing.” This is a close cousin to my favorite Gandhi quote, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Hopefully, amidst such ponderings you will find this awe difficult to take!

May you join this mystical union, and whatever dues you may pay, may they be well worth it…

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